As the autumn is fading out to make way for the winter, it is taking sellers' confidence with it. More homeowners are becoming less confident about listing and pricing their homes, a latest Redfin research showed.
The survey was conducted between October 1 and 3 on 295 current and potential sellers across 30 major U.S. markets.
According to the research, the share of home sellers across the country who thought now is a good time to sell dropped by 17 percentage points for the third quarter of 2014.
Only 35.1 percent of the home sellers thought listing their home now would get them the right price. The figure is well below the 54.2 percent recorded in the previous quarter.
So why is seller confidence waning? Shawn Flynn, an agent with Redfin in the Boston area, explains:
"Right now the real estate climate is very different from this time last year. There are more homes for sale but fewer homes are selling, whereas last year the opposite was true. I'm starting to have conversations with sellers for the first time in two to three years about how it's no longer a seller's market. While some sellers are disappointed that they can no longer expect double-digit price gains, increasing inventory and stabilizing prices provide relief for everyone - buyers and sellers - that we are moving toward a much more balanced market."
More sellers say that they will wait now and only list their homes when they can price it right. Fifty nine percent of the surveyed sellers said they would wait for the right time to list to get the maximum price, while 36.3 percent said they would wait until there was enough inventory in the market before listing.
Check out this graph below:
But experts think prices won't go anywhere northwards. In fact, the pace of price appreciation across the United States has been slowing down since the last few months. August's Case-Shiller index reflected the slowest price appreciation in the last two years gaining just 5.6 percent from August 2013.
"In housing, boring is better," Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow, was quoted by USA Today.
"As appreciation cools and more inventory comes on line, buyers will start to gain a more competitive advantage, after years of sellers being in the driver's seat. More sedate home value growth, coupled with interest rates that remain incredibly low, will also help housing stay affordable, which is critical to drawing in the next generation of younger, first-time buyers that had been sitting on the sidelines."
